This fall, public broadcasting systems are flashing back to 1973, when a crew of goofball pre-teens in rugby shirts pogo-sticked their way onto the airways. Zoom - the acneed answer to Romper Room - proved to be one of the first experiments in viewer-driven content, founded on the "Zoomdo" - a dare mailed in by one of the millions of viewers. Can five people stand on a beach ball at once? How do you make a movie with a shoe box?
But now public stations are leveling their own dare: Will community-owned TV be the first to "get" interactive technologies, long before its elder, and richer, network siblings? If the array of autumnal initiatives are any indication - from adventurous grant programs to massive public archives pulled from their documentaries, PBS's spirit of experimentation and education may provide a model of innovation and antidote to the promotional network ventures.
What better place to start than Zoom? Beginning this fall, Boston's public broadcasting channel WGBH will be acceptingsubmissions for Zoom 1999, "totally built with content from kids" through the Web site, says WGBH online director Howard Cutler. In early November, Washington, DC, station WETA and PBS Online will launch an enormous 1,000-page educational site tied in with Ken Burns' new documentary, Lewis and Clark.
Starting Tuesday, Frontline will begin experimenting with visual "bugs" - onscreen text - that point users to specific information on the Web site during the broadcast. While Frontline may not be the first show to litter the TV screen with online references, the site will include an unprecedented amount of reportorial documentation, says PBS Online spokesman Kevin Dando. "On TV, you will have two minutes of a 45-minute interview, but on the site, you'll have the entire transcript," Dando adds. The mantra of the effort stems from a quote by Frontline executive producer David Fanning: "The TV show is the executive summary of the Web site."
In some ways, public TV and the Net are spiritual brethren in ways that network television can only envy. Forty years ago, community-licensed public broadcasting stations grew out of citizens' interest in reclaiming the airwaves from corporate control, says Michael Connet of KCPT in Kansas City, Missouri: "They recognized this thing called TV would be a powerful tool for use in a community, and decided [they] had better band together." In the 1970s, the 350 public stations created its own "Internet" to spread regional programming to affiliates across the country (distributed by satellite) - a kind of national network of home-grown shows. That interconnection made possible the commonality of programming - namely Sesame Street. "There is a real healthy tension between local and nationalized programs," says Connet.
Denver's KRMA cribbed a lesson from talk radio for its new monthly Public Affairs Program, which is structured entirely around local issues and questions posted at the program's site. Reporters examine the postings and set out into the field to investigate. "We're trying to loosen the reigns for the audience," says KRMA spokeswoman Bobby Carleton.
In the same spirit, PBS and P.O.V Interactive, an offshoot of the controversial PBS series P.O.V., have created a Web Development Fund to give grants between US$25,000 and $50,000 for progressively-minded online ventures. "What passes for talk shows and chat rooms encourages people to be less than they can be," says WDF executive Marc Weiss. "What's happening on the Web is much deeper than what happens in conversation ... we want people to think outside the categories that exist."
Niche-market cable channels like Nickelodeon and the Discovery Channel have also made successes out of their online ventures. With extensive original reportage, Discovery has managed to carve out a unique space for its design-heavy historical exotica (if only for brand-extension). A recent project has a reporter and photographer firing back dispatches from a Gobi desert archeological dig. As Discovery's executive editor, Andrea Meditch, describes it, the site is a way "to enhance TV for the new generation - not a way to take you someplace else, but a way to dive deeper."
While network TV stations struggle to get their news sites online and operational (NBC's notable Homicide site is the one exception to the rule), public broadcasters have already started working to strengthen the marriage of TV and technology.
"We used to say we're developing the Web, but now we're developing 'convergence,'" says Carleton. Boston's WGBH, at the forefront of the field, used Intel's Intercast technology to broadcast Nova all last year. But the technology - which lets broadcasters mount Web content on the TV - only works with live feeds, says WGBH's Cutler, and the distribution of the set-top boxes is "Intel's problem."
But some of these methods can seem particularly distasteful to the networks. "I find it really offensive ... to cede our judgment to our readers," says Merrill Brown, editor in chief of MSNBC on the Internet. "We are trained and paid to make decisions about journalistic matters - the kinds of stories we cover and our approach - and that shouldn't be subject to a vote or tally." Brown says the "documentary mandate" of PBS - and the sheer numbers of hours of broadcasting - gives the public stations an "interesting opportunity" to experiment, but only mimics MSNBC's current use of the medium - extensive supplementary interviews and multimedia additions to the television coverage.
Public broadcasters are still waiting for proof to make it into MSNBC's pudding. "MSNBC says 'Audio Headlines' ... so I get 15 seconds of an F-16 that crashes off the coast of North Carolina. So what? Big deal!" says KRMA's Carleton. "We can't brag, but MSNBC is the one that has all these resources ... and I'm really disappointed. Their stuff isn't up to date. They canceled The Site, it's off the air, but they still had The Site listed on their schedule as of [Friday]."
Until someone starts making money on these experiments, says WGBH's Cutler, public broadcasting doesn't need to worry about competition. "[Networks] don't need the depth [available online]," he says. "They're commerce- and ratings-driven, not mission-driven."
